Senior U.S. Official Describes 2-Day Visit to Syria

ROME — President Obama’s envoy to the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State said Monday that he had just completed a two-day weekend trip in Syria, the first known visit by a senior United States official since the coalition began airstrikes there in 2014.

The envoy, Brett McGurk, said that he had spent a day touring Kobani, the small border town where Kurdish fighters backed by heavy American bombing repelled an invasion by Islamic State fighters almost exactly a year ago. Mr. McGurk said he had toured other places in northern Syria as well to evaluate the success of the campaign to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Mr. McGurk and officials from the Defense Department met with what he described as “a very diverse array of committed fighters in the anti-ISIL campaign,” including Arab, Kurdish, Christian and Turkmen leaders, as part of a long-planned trip to the region.

The news of Mr. McGurk’s trip was expected to draw a hostile reaction from the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, which regards such visits as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

“Obviously, it was very sensitive,” Mr. McGurk told reporters in Rome, where he, Secretary of State John Kerry and other coalition leaders will hold meetings starting Tuesday to plot the next stages of the effort against the Islamic State.

Mr. McGurk said he had toured near the site where Kurdish forces received an airdrop of weapons and ammunition that Mr. Obama ordered in the fall 2014; seen the devastation in the center of the town where heavy fighting raged for months; and visited a memorial for Kurdish forces, as well as areas where people clearing rubble were still finding the remains of Islamic State fighters.

“It was quite moving and poignant to see these sites with our own eyes and to talk to the people who were in the fight,” Mr. McGurk said.

He said the visit had not been tied to, or timed to coincide with, the diplomatic talks beginning in Geneva, from which Syria’s largest Kurdish groups have been excluded.

“Of course there were questions about that process,” Mr. McGurk said. He would not comment on who had been invited to the talks, but said he and other American officials had restated their support for the United Nations resolution that endorsed the peace process, calling for a unified, multiethnic and multisectarian Syria.

“This is just the beginning of a process, and we emphasize the need for inclusivity, particularly as this process unfolds,” he said.

In Rome, Mr. Kerry will help lead talks that are expected to focus on how the American-led coalition can “accelerate” aspects of its fight against the Islamic State, said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the talks in advance.

The meetings will focus in particular on Libya, especially the seaside city of Surt, where the Islamic State is increasingly trying to establish a base and attract fighters, the official said.